This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

In the dock are two sisters accused of stealing from their employers. But what really seemed to be on trial in a suburban London court was the now-defunct marriage of Charles Saatchi and Nigella Lawson.

Did Saatchi have a temper? Had Lawson used cocaine? What about marijuana?

Yes, Lawson said, she had used cocaine a few times in the past — as recently as 2010, when she was enduring “intimate terrorism” by her ex-husband. And yes, she’d smoked cannabis, too, though she’s now given up.

“I have never been a drug addict. I have never been a habitual user,” Lawson testified. “I don’t have a drug problem. I have a life problem.”

The celebrity chef known as the “Domestic Goddess” even made reference to her famous curves, saying: “People who do that are a lot thinner than I am.”

Accompanied by police officers, Lawson strode past a phalanx of photographers on her way into court Wednesday morning, looking, as the Daily Mail said, like “a woman to be reckoned with.”

She was in Isleworth Crown Court, in southwest London, to testify as a prosecution witness in the fraud trial of Francesca and Elisabetta Grillo. The sisters once worked for Lawson and Saatchi, and are accused of spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on their credit cards.

Lawyers for the sisters allege that Lawson tacitly allowed them to use the cards in exchange for keeping quiet about her drug use; according to Sky News, Lawson testified that she “found it abhorrent” when she discovered unauthorized spending.

“It’s very difficult when you find out that someone you have loved and trusted could behave in that way,” Lawson said.

While Lawson testified about her relationship with the sisters — she was, she said, very thankful for the support she and her children received during the terminal illness of Lawson’s first husband, the journalist John Diamond — it was the marriage and lifestyle of the jet-set couple that seemed most closely scrutinized.

The court heard that Saatchi liked to drink good wine from Annabel’s, a glamorous members-only club in London’s Mayfair district; that he was not a fan of using credit cards, and instead kept a stash of cash in a plastic bag in the kitchen; and that the couple was generous with their staff — they paid for wedding receptions, and bestowed expensive gifts, such as watches and jewelry.

All these details were dutifully reported by U.K. newspapers.

Lawson and Saatchi divorced in July after images were splashed across British tabloids of the 70-year-old art dealer and former advertising executive with his hand around his wife’s throat and on her nose.

It was those pictures, taken on the terrace of Scott’s restaurant in central London, and Saatchi’s concern for his reputation, that led Lawson to testify that her former husband had vowed revenge.

“He said to me at the start that if I didn’t go back to him and clear his name he would destroy me,” Lawson said, adding she had been “put on trial here . . . and in the world’s press.”

And Lawson said Saatchi’s explanation for the image in which he was touching her nose was false: “He told everyone that he was taking cocaine out of my nose at Scott’s when he knows that is a lie.”

During his turn on the stand last week, Saatchi told the court he had no proof his former wife had taken drugs. Earlier in the week, an email from Saatchi to Lawson, which was made public, said she had been “off her head” on drugs.

But in testimony at the sisters’ fraud trial, Saatchi said he had “never, never seen any evidence” of drug use by his former wife.

“Are you asking me whether I think that Nigella truly was off her head? Not for a second,” he said. “Over this whole period she was writing books very successfully and appearing on television.”

The Associated Press reported that Lawson appeared “composed but tense” during “often testy exchanges” with defence lawyer Anthony Metzer, at one point snapping, “I don’t see why my marriage is pertinent to you.”

Lawson is to return to court Thursday as the cross-examination continues.

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com